Well isn’t this just special.

John McCain has been caught in a lie. It’s lie that Republicans aren’t going to like very much. On Thursday John McCain appeared on The O’Reilly Factor and was attempting to deny a story that’s been gaining traction. He issued his denial, but it only took a few hours to be debunked as a lie.

During the 2000 election, McCain was the victim of the sleaze and lies Republicans frequently use. George W. Bush put out the false claim that McCain had fathered an illegitimate black child. Knowing that his own military experience was, at best, dubious, and facing a former decorated combat pilot, Bush floated out the claim that John McCain was probably not mentally fit to hold public office since he’d been a P.OW. during the Vietnam war.

It’s certainly understandable that John McCain would be offended by those tactics. Most likely his well documented temper kicked into high gear. The Bush smear worked and it created the end of McCain’s campaign. You can’t really fault John McCain for feeling what any of us would, about the man that had smeared his military service, and lied about his adopted child, ending his chance to become president.

One year later, attending a dinner party hosted by the actress Candice Bergen, at her Beverly Hills home, John McCain made a stunning revelation. He told the assembled guests that he had not voted for George W. Bush in the 2000 general election. Most of us would have probably done the same thing, but now his admission is problematic for the Republican Party’s presidential nominee. By comparison, you won’t hear any stories circulating that the Democrat’s candidates having crossed ranks and voted for Bush. So John McCain’s admission poses a serious problem for him now. His own party has been struggling to just tolerate him, and this certainly is not going to help.

So John McCain went on the O’Reilly program and denied he’d ever made that claim. It was a lie.

John McCain’s lie had been debunked by those in attendance. In published accounts appearing in The Huffington Report, The New York Times. The Los Angeles Times and Washington Post, they confirmed, with sources, that John McCain did, in fact, make the claim that he did not vote for George W. Bush in 2000, then lied about it during his interview with Bill O’Reilly.

On Monday, The Huffington Report reported that John McCain told Arianna he had not voted for George W. Bush in 2000. Today, both The New York Times and The Washington Post published articles with sources confirming John McCain had indeed told Arianna and other members of the group she was with, that he did not vote for the President in 2000.

The New York Times story, titled “Did Senator John McCain Not Vote For George W. Bush in 2000?”, reads in part… “Now two other guests at the same dinner, given by the actress Candice Bergen, at her home in Beverly Hills, say they heard much the same thing as Ms. Huffington. Both of them, the former "West Wing" actors Bradley Whitford and Richard Schiff, were asked by Ms. Huffington to speak to The New York Times.

The Washington Post story states, “Two Hollywood actors who dined with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in early 2001 at actress Candice Bergen's home confirmed Thursday that he told the assembled group he did not vote for George W. Bush in the 2000 election. In separate phone interviews, Bradley Whitford and Richard Schiff -- both of whom starred in the television political drama "The West Wing" -- said the senator made the remarks after he spoke at length about his reservations about Bush becoming president. Arianna Huffington first wrote about the incident Monday, asserting neither McCain nor his wife Cindy backed Bush in his first presidential bid, and the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday that a woman who was also at the dinner confirmed Huffington's account, though she declined to give her name.

The Los Angeles Times talked to another source from the party on Wednesday that also corroborated Arianna's account: Another woman who attended the 2001 dinner said Tuesday that Cindy McCain had told her she could not bring herself to vote for Bush. The source said she did not want to be identified, so as not to alienate the McCains.

In all the presidential elections I’ve witnessed, this is a first. The Republican Party is going to nominate as their candidate, a man who wouldn’t and did not, support his own party. When we see all those photographs of John McCain hugging on George W. Bush, laying his head softly on Bush’s shoulder during an embrace, it makes me wonder if he’s just being hypocritical and would rather adopt Mike Tyson’s technique and just bite his ear off. It also gives pause to remember that McCain engaged in conversations about becoming John Kerry’s running mate in 2004. But that’s who the Republicans have picked as their candidate in 2008, and now they’re stuck with him.